Public Interest Law

Stacey E. Platt

About

Stacey Platt is a clinical professor of law and the associate director of the Civitas ChildLaw Clinic at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where her focus is the training of law students to represent children in legal proceedings.

Professor Platt has dedicated her legal career to representing low-income children and families. At the ChildLaw Clinic, Professor Platt and her students represent children involved in child protection cases and high conflict custody disputes. In addition to clinical supervision, Professor Platt co-teaches the weekly clinic seminar, and serves as a faculty lecturer and trainer in several other law school courses involving child and family law, as well as trial practice.

Before joining Loyola, Professor Platt was a staff attorney with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago, where her areas of focus were domestic violence and children's issues. She has extensive experience representing parents, caretakers and children in abuse and neglect proceedings in the juvenile court and in custody and visitation proceedings in the domestic relations court, including work on significant appeals. She has also worked on several class action lawsuits pursuing reform of Illinois' child welfare and education systems.

Professor Platt has co-authored several articles on topics including failed adoption, older youth aging out of foster care, and the educational rights of homeless children. She co-wrote and appeared in a video module of the American Bar Association's National Training Program on the Representation of Children in High Conflict Custody Disputes. Professor Platt serves on the editorial board of Family Court Review, a publication of Hofstra University and the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts (AFCC).

Professor Platt has served as a teacher for the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence and the National Institute of Trial Advocacy in numerous litigation training programs for children's advocates and domestic violence advocates.

Prior to becoming a lawyer, Professor Platt was a caseworker in the New York City child welfare system. She received her undergraduate degree in psychology and history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She received her law degree, cum laude, from New York University School of Law.

In August 2011, The Chicago Bar Association honored Professor Platt with the Leonard Jay Schrager Award of Excellence, in recognition of her contribution to improving access to justice.

Speaker, Five Things Well Meaning Advocates Trying to Import Best Interest into Asylum Proceedings Should Know, Migration and Child Welfare Round Table Conference, Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work and Humane Society, Chicago, IL (August 2006)